The wall is finally complete. All the trim is in place, all the paint touched up. The only thing that is not yet done on the wall are the lights.
I spent last weekend finding the correct stain combination. The winner was a 50/50 mix of Minwax Mahogany and African Rose Wood gel stains. All of the pieces have between 3-6 coats as well as an under coat of stain prep wood sealer and then about 3 clear coats on top. The whole process took about a week. This was the first time I had used gel stain instead of liquid and I have to say that I will not be using liquid again if I can avoid it.
The cap in the front is removable allowing access to the storage areas on the left and right and to the top of the component shelf. The three caps in the back are all glued down with construction adhesive. Despite my best efforts at clamping and weighting it down I still had to use a couple of finish nails in the center board to correct the warp. I caulked the seams and painted and everything is done.
The only thing left to do is install the lights and mount the TV. For the lights I have chosen frosted LED lights from TheLEDLight.com. I will be installing 11 of these one in each box, on the sides, three in the center top box and two to back-light the TV.
I already have the mounting bracket for the TV, we purchased it at the same time we bought the TV so I’ll be glad to finally get to use it. Once the lights are up I have to figure out exactly where to mount the bracket in order to have the TV centered.
